A75 Springholm traffic lights costs: EIR release

Information requested

The costs per year, over the last five years, over the installation, repair and operational use of the attitude traffic lights in the village of Springholm in the region of Dumfries and Galloway.

As the information you have requested is 'environmental information' for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Response

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), Transport Scotland is not required to provide information which it does not have. We do not have some of the information you have requested because the general maintenance costs for faults or damage would be included in the lump sum costs provided to our Operating Company for the South West Area (Amey) for routine maintenance. Accurate data on this is not therefore available.

This exception is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about maintenance costs for the attitude traffic lights in the village of Springholm, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

However, please see details of the costs we do currently hold.

The installation costs of the signals, which include the upgrade to the detection/activation system, monitoring of signals and data collection for red light running surveys (up to 2019) = £209,542.82.

Maintenance/Monitoring costs

• 2020 = £15,298.50
• 2021 = £29,232.00
• 2022 = £33,138.00

It should be noted that the maintenance/monitoring costs detailed are specific to the ongoing research/monitoring of these signals and, as detailed above, general maintenance costs for faults or damage are not included.

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